In the News

Equifax India Launches Graduation Score

New credit score aimed at enabling increased individual lending to group loan customers

Mumbai, 2nd May, 2018 – Equifax India, registered as Equifax
Credit Information Services Private Limited (ECIS), today announced
the launch of Graduation Score, a first of its kind in the industry.
The Graduation score assesses risk of customers who were primarily
used to borrowing as part of a group to “graduate” to taking loans as
individuals. This score has been built based on performance of group
loan customers from the credit bureau data. This score will also
enable digitization of the individual lending to group loan process
within lenders. The Graduation Score from Equifax enables primarily
group loan customers to accelerate to individual loans retail loans
therefore becoming eligible for loans of higher amounts and longer tenures.

Graduation Score is a bureau credit score developed by Equifax to
enable financial institutions to lend individual loans to customers
who have primarily had group loans in the past. The concept of group
loans was originally developed to have new-to-credit customers take
loans with low EMIs to be paid as a groups and then graduate to
individual loans with higher sanctioned amounts and EMIs and a lower
probability of default.

“Financial institutions rely on manual assessment of loan
applications which require high costs and time for evaluation,” said K
M Nanaiah, Country Head, Equifax India. “Using Graduation Score from
Equifax, they can approve these loans digitally on the basis of the
customer’s probability of default on individual loans and therefore
improve risk assessment of the product. The current customer view from
Graduation Score and combined CIR supports consistent credit
decisions, strong revenue generation and profitability throughout the
customer lifecycle.”

As the group loan customers are readying themselves for repayment of
higher value loans as individuals, Graduation score will provide the
much needed impetus in risk assessment. Currently, financial
institutions rely largely on manual assessment of loan applications
and bureau data of group, individual and retail loans for evaluation,
which ends up being costly and inefficient. Graduation Score enables
them to evaluate individual loans for customers that have not had
individual loans in the past and increase the amount of individual
lending while they drive good quality of credit too.

About Equifax

Equifax is a global information solutions company that uses unique
data, innovative analytics, technology and industry expertise to power
organizations and individuals around the world by transforming
knowledge into insights that help make more informed business and
personal decisions.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., Equifax operates or has investments in
24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe and
the Asia Pacific region. It is a member of Standard & Poor's
(S&P) 500® Index and its common stock is traded on the New York
Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX. Equifax employs 10,300
employees worldwide.